Martin Harbottle's Appreciation of Time

by Dominic Utton

  And what have they got for their trouble? The capital comprehensively smashed to blocks the size of Lego bricks. The rubble piled so high not even the tanks could get in. The thick layers of concrete dust in the air like a fog. The terrible silence. Terrible in contrast to the awful noises of the attack before… but terrible also because there is no human sound. No crying, no screaming, no wailing, no groaning. No mewling, no moaning, no pleading, no feeble begging for mercy. No sound… because there’s nobody left to make a sound. That’s the terror of that silence.

  And then, the new leader. Astride a tank, in full military fatigues. Arms raised and palms outstretched. Magnificently bearded and with aviator shades. Talking of peace and unity and a new stability for the whole region, and later, why not!, the whole continent! The new leader – and his plans to bulldoze the old order away (both old orders – the old old order and the shortlived new old order). Literally bulldoze it all away. Starting with the capital city, starting on Monday. He’s going to shovel everything up and shovel it all out and build a new city in its place. And with the rubble and the bricks and the sticks and the stones will doubtless be the bodies of the thousands of people who used to live there. And it doesn’t take a genius or a cynic or a tabloid journalist to work out that they’ll be bulldozed and shovelled up too. ‘Cleansing’, was the word he used. And we’ve heard that before, haven’t we?

  And then the contrasting shots of the adoring crowds back in the mother country. The jubilant scenes in the streets and the squares. The desperate declarations of love for their glorious, triumphant leader. The banners, the huge posters, the guns fired in the air in celebration. A nation united in victory. A nation doubled in size. And any thoughts of ever trying any funny business ever again as comprehensively flattened as their newfound territory’s former capital.

  So, yes. Things could be worse, I guess. When you look at the big picture. Things could definitely be worse. But it doesn’t mean things can’t be bad here too, right? There is no quantity theory of unhappiness. There are levels, sure. But things are still bad here too.

  Oh, and you know what else? (I still have a few more minutes left of your time to use up tonight. Sorry about that, Martin: but then – you started it. You started it the moment this train stopped.) Talking of how bad things can get, I spoke to Train Girl. About the whole Mr Blair situation, I mean. I told her everything, except I changed the names to protect the innocent and guilty alike. I pretended it was a mate of mine worried about his wife’s sudden and irrational jealousy.

  And do you know what she said? ‘This mate of yours? His wife is jealous because she’s been shagging this other feller on the side.’ That’s what she said.

  ‘Your mate’s wife is cheating on him,’ she said, with an authoritative nod of the head. ‘That’s why she’s acting so weird. Think about it. She’s there, having it away with this other guy, and although she feels bad about it, she doesn’t feel bad enough to stop shagging him. Until your mate goes and tells her how he had the chance to shag someone else himself and didn’t because he loves her. And what does that do? That makes her feel doubly bad. Super bad.

  ‘So how does she react? She takes it out on your mate. She tries to make him feel like he’s the bad guy here. And all because of her own guilt. All because he did what she couldn’t by turning his free shag down. It’s your basic guilty transference – she’s transferring onto him all the anger she unconsciously knows he should be feeling towards her. She’s not really furious with your mate; she’s furious with herself. But now she’s trapped.

  ‘In a weird way, you know,’ and this was said with a wink, ‘it would have been better all round if your mate had shagged his sure thing. At least then they would have been even-stevens. As bad as each other.’

  So there you go. That’s not exactly the best news either, is it? Train Girl thinks Beth has been having it away with Mr Blair. Train Girl thinks my wife has been cheating on me with a Guardian-reading, tweed-wearing, latte-sipping, holier-than-thou Jericho socialist.

  And you know what almost the worst bit is? I wasn’t surprised she thought that. Because I’ve been thinking the same. And even thinking about thinking about it makes me feel dizzy and blind and sick. Even thinking about thinking it drains my blood and raises my bile and fills me with reeling horror, with lurching panic.

  What if it’s true, Martin? What if it’s actually true? What do I do then? You really want to know? You really want to know what I’d do? I’d kill him, that’s what I’d do. I’d kill the bastard.

  Au revoir!

  Dan

  ‌Letter 55

  From: DantheMan020@gmail.com

  To: Martin.Harbottle@premier-westward.com

  Re: 07.31 Premier Westward Railways train from Oxford to London Paddington, December 22. Amount of my day wasted: 10 minutes. Fellow sufferers: Train Girl, Guilty New Mum, Lego Head, Universal Grandpa.

  Oh calm down, Martin, I’m not really going to kill him. I couldn’t kill someone. I couldn’t kill anyone. The truth is, I don’t know what I’d do. But don’t worry. I wouldn’t actually kill him.

  Anyway. I haven’t done anything yet. I haven’t talked to Beth. I’ve just watched. I’ve watched, and listened, and made mental notes. Oh: and I looked at the messages on her mobile phone, too. Obviously. (There was nothing incriminating there.) I got into her Twitter account (likewise) and checked her Facebook (ditto). I haven’t cracked her Gmail account, but I’m sure I can. But still. My mind is not exactly what you might call at ease about it. I’m going to have to confront her with it.

  But not today. And not tomorrow, either. Tomorrow we’re going to Torquay, while we still can. While our non-transferable off-peak super-advance standard-class return tickets are still worth the paper they’re printed on. We can’t afford to spend the night (not even in midwinter), but it should still make for a nice day out, right? It may not be an actual holiday, but it’s a start. A chance to forget all the awfulness right now and actually enjoy each other’s company. And even I’m not stupid enough to ruin it by asking my wife if she’s been having an affair.

  Meanwhile… back in the land of the living, things have been nothing short of ridiculous at work. It’s a ridiculous week this week anyway – with Christmas being on a Sunday there will be no newspaper and so we’ve literally nothing to do. Nothing to do except ignore calls from other journalists to tell our (anonymous, off-the-record) stories from inside the most notorious newsroom in the world. Nothing to do except scan the web for mentions of ourselves and all we’ve supposedly got up to. Nothing to do except patiently, systematically, methodically trawl through all our internet caches and email archives and delete anything that might be in the slightest bit incriminating. Nothing to do but photocopy contacts books and then destroy the originals. Nothing to do but transfer all messages, phone numbers and email access from work-provided company phones to newly bought Pay As You Go handsets. And then wipe the work ones clean.

  Nothing to do but exactly what the police told us we shouldn’t be doing. But then, you know, we’re not stupid, are we? And who knows what might get taken out of context when presented as evidence. Better to be safe than sorry.

  Anyway. What was I saying? Oh yes: I’m not going to kill Mr Blair. Of course I’m not. Even if he has had it away with my wife. Which we don’t know if he did. Because I haven’t asked her yet. But I will. I will ask her.

  And meanwhile… I’m friends again with Train Girl. I haven’t told Beth, of course, but every morning, like old times, we seek each other out in Coach C, we sit and we shoot the breeze all the way to Paddington.

  She hasn’t mentioned our conversation of last week (my fictional friend, her unerringly apposite advice) and I haven’t talked about home either. We don’t talk about much, truth be told. We speak a lot, we speak non-stop, but we’re not saying much. It’s like the opposite of me and Beth – there we don’t do any speaking, but the silence… the silence shouts. The silence shouts all manner of suspicions and accusatio
ns and resentments.

  What do we speak about, Train Girl and I? Well, her love life, mostly. I can’t say I’m not intrigued. She’s coming to the end of a relationship, as it turns out. I say relationship – as close to a relationship as she gets. There’s some bloke she’s been seeing (on her terms, at her place, at times convenient to her) and, not to put too deep a gloss on it, she’s thinking of stopping seeing him.

  He’s an architect, apparently. Has his own practice. Married, of course, two kids. The oldest is 22. He’s a few months shy of 60 but in good shape. Works out a lot. Body of a man two-thirds his age. What you might call a ‘silver fox’. And good in bed, too: just the right mix of arrogance, experience and a rather eager gratitude that someone half his age and so obviously beautiful should even be giving him the time of day, let alone getting him in the sack. (Train Girl is remarkably candid about these things, Martin: she sits there, with her legs crossed and slightly sidewise, so her knees are pointing at an angle towards mine, one hand resting on my arm, squeezing every now and then to make a point, the other fiddling with her hair or a button on her jacket, her eyes dancing, her lips always moving, her mouth more often than not turned up in a smile… she sits there in the mornings and she talks quite openly about just how good or bad in bed the men in her life are. What they like, what she likes, what she wished they liked…)

  But anyway, she’s thinking of finishing with him. The problem isn’t his age, or his wife. The problem is the sex.

  ‘All we do is have sex,’ she said. ‘And that’s great, it’s fun… but it is just sex. You know? I tell him when to come round, he comes round, we do that thing with a bit of dinner and a bottle of wine, and then we have sex, and then I pack him off again. And although it’s good sex – and good wine – it’s just sex. We don’t talk; we don’t laugh. We don’t go out and have a laugh, you know? Not like me and you did. There’s no falling over in Soho in the rain.’

  There isn’t, is there? There’s not much laughing at all, anywhere, right now. There’s not a lot in the way of falling over in Soho in the rain. Not with Train Girl, and not at home either. And as for sex… well, that’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? That’s what we’d all like to know.

  Au revoir!

  Dan

  From: Martin.Harbottle@premier-westward.com

  To: DantheMan020@gmail.com

  Re: 07.31 Premier Westward Railways train from Oxford to London Paddington, December 22.

  Dear Dan

  Thank you for your recent letters. I feel very touched that you seem to be so pleased I’ve returned from holiday, although of course I will be out of the office again for a week for the Christmas break!

  I am sorry, however, that you have once again experienced a few minor disruptions to your services. All bar Saturday December 17’s delays were as a result of the ongoing service improvements we’re implementing on the Oxford–London line. Unfortunately, the implementation of any improvements to our service does mean an attendant dropping off of reliability and punctuality.

  On December 17 your train was sadly disrupted due to a suspected sighting of an intruder on the line. It later turned out to be a false alarm – a scarecrow had in fact blown onto the sidings from some nearby allotments – but as I’m sure you’ll appreciate, it took some time to establish the facts and secure the area. After that, of course, it was smooth sailing all the way to Oxford!

  I sincerely hope you have a magical time in Torquay and I’d like to wish you and your family a peaceful and very happy Christmas!

  Martin

  ‌Letter 56

  From: DantheMan020@gmail.com

  To: Martin.Harbottle@premier-westward.com

  Re: 10.01 Premier Westward Railways train from Oxford to Torquay, December 23. Amount of my day wasted: all day. Fellow sufferers: wife, child.

  And so the morning broke, Martin. The holiday. The city break. The trip to Torquay in the deep midwinter. On the day before the day before Christmas, Beth and Sylvie and I loaded up our bags (full of things for Sylvie, of course, nappies and nappy bags and two complete changes of clothes in case of accidents; baby food and water and spare water and spare baby food; wipes and wet wipes and tissues and muslin squares; three favourite cuddly toys and a blanket), strapped them all to the pram, strapped the baby in the pram, and set off through the weak and watery morning light to Oxford station.

  Two hours and 47 minutes of travel lay ahead of us, and at the end of it: Torquay. Torquay! Just for one day. Two hours and 47 minutes each way, just for an afternoon in Torquay: it seems a long time, doesn’t it?

  You know what? It’s not so long. It’s not as long as, for example, six hours.

  Six hours, Martin! Six hours on one of your terrible trains and we didn’t get anywhere near Torquay. We didn’t even make it to Reading. Six hours, and you know how close to the seaside we got?

  Radley. We made it as far as Radley. That’s about eight miles east of Oxford.

  Here’s what happened. Here are the edited highlights. Here’s what we did on our holidays…

  Beth and I had called a temporary truce. We decided, in as few words as possible, with as little in the way of reconciliation as manageable, that we would have ‘a nice day out’, free from all the tension of recent times. For Sylvie’s sake, mostly. We decided to behave like adults, like a proper family.

  And so there we were on the platform, our little nuclear family, ready for our grand day out. The train came on time (well done!), we boarded, we found a pair of seats together, we packed up the pram and loaded up the luggage racks, we wedged Sylvie onto our laps, and we got ready to go. Go!

  No. The train made a half-arsed limp out of the station, struggled along the line for a bit, and then, with a sigh and a shrug, slowed and stopped before Oxford’s spires were barely out of sight. And there we stayed.

  We stayed there until the sun started to set again. On a draughty chugger train with no catering trolley. Cramped into a carriage with a baby on our laps. And if the initial delay gave us something to talk about (something other than ourselves, our problems, our suspicions and mistrusts) then once 20 minutes or so had passed, we fell silent again.

  After an hour Sylvie started crying.

  After an hour and a half I went forward to try to find out what was going on (‘Oh, like he’s just going to tell you,’ said Beth, ‘when he’s not bothered to let any of the other passengers know what’s going on, he’s just going to open the door to his cab and invite you in and explain the whole situation to you…’).

  After an hour and a half and three minutes I came back none the wiser and sat down with a sarcastic sort of smile in answer to Beth’s raised eyebrows.

  After two hours the driver finally told us what was up. The train had failed. It had failed, Martin. It had failed at being a train. We couldn’t move forwards or backwards. We also couldn’t get off the train as that would be dangerous, apparently. We would have to wait until a relief train could be found to shunt us back up the track towards Oxford. They were currently trying to source one, but due to the delays that our failed train was causing across the whole network, that might take a while.

  After three hours, Sylvie had eaten all of her food and drunk all of her water and had started on the spare food and spare water.

  After four hours we were told a relief train was on its way. ‘With a bit of luck we might be home for teatime!’ joked the driver. Nobody laughed.

  After four hours and ten minutes, Beth and I started arguing. I don’t know whose fault it was, really (it was probably mine). I can’t even remember what it was about… it was about everything except the one thing we really did want to argue about – whether I was having an affair, whether she was having an affair. I think it began with a suggestion we save some of Sylvie’s food, just in case, which was obviously a thinly veiled attack on Beth’s mothering abilities, which then became an assault on my lack of contribution as a father, which then escalated into a full-on three-way tantrum between two adul
ts and a baby over which of us was the most hard-done-by and least appreciated by the other two.

  And the other passengers? They pretended not to hear. They did that British thing: they engrossed themselves in their books and magazines and mobile phones. They pretended it wasn’t happening at all – as though if they concentrated hard enough we would simply cease to be there, ruining an already terrible experience for everyone.

  After five hours and 15 minutes we stopped arguing for a while to consider that Sylvie was now on her last nappy. ‘I told you she shouldn’t have eaten so much,’ I said, somewhat unnecessarily.

  After five hours and 17 minutes we started arguing again: in whispers now, furiously hissing at each other like demented geese.

  After five hours and 35 minutes the relief train finally turned up. Someone attempted a cheer. Someone else told them to ‘shut the fuck up, nobhead’. Beth started to laugh. I started to laugh too. Sylvie stopped crying and regarded us suspiciously.

  We laughed almost all the way to Oxford. ‘Shut the fuck up, nobhead!’ That person had managed to endure over an hour and 20 minutes of Beth and I ripping shreds out of each other, had dealt with over four hours of Sylvie’s wails and screams and soiled nappies… and yet one little attempt at a cheer for the relief train was just too much for him: shut the fuck up, nobhead! Perfect!

  At six hours we jerked back into Oxford station, loaded up the pram again, loaded the baby into the pram again, and wearily walked home. In silence, again.

  Torquay, eh? Magical. Thanks, Martin. Thanks for a wonderful day out.

  Au revoir!

  Dan

  ‌Letter 57

  From: DantheMan020@gmail.com

  To: Martin.Harbottle@premier-westward.com

  Re: 19.50 Premier Westward Railways train from London Paddington to Oxford, December 28. Amount of my day wasted: eight minutes. Fellow sufferers: No regulars (away for Christmas, obvs).